The sickle no longer left Kronos's side.
He did not carry it as a weapon, not yet. It was too new, too strange—too powerful to name. But he kept it close, bound to his aura as if tethered to his breath.
At night, it hummed softly when he drifted into stillness. Not song. Not voice. Just a tone—a vibration so deep it echoed across dreams.
And those dreams were no longer his own.
In the Hollow, Elias sat upon a pillar of root and mist, eyes closed. His presence stretched wide, threading through Gaia's grief, through Kronos's doubt, through the myth yet-to-come.
The tree of echoes had bloomed again.
Not leaves, but visions.
One in particular stirred him.
Kronos was standing upon a mountaintop, drenched in shadow. At his feet, stars fell like ash. Above him, the sky was gone. Not broken—ripped.
Behind him, something darker waited—a shape Elias could not yet name.
He leaned forward, murmuring into the stream of myth.
"No choice is without echo."
The dream rippled.
And for the first time, something answered back.
It was not Kronos.
It was another.
A mind like fire, cool and ordered. A consciousness that ticked like a clock and burned like a star.
A presence not born of emotion or sorrow, but of questioning.
"Who weaves the thread?"
Elias opened his eyes.
A path through the Hollow had changed—no longer curving away from the core, but inward. Toward him.
He rose to his feet.
And through the swirling mist, a figure emerged.
He was tall, radiant with golden thought. Not glowing like Hyperion, not burning like Prometheus—this was cold fire. A mind alight.
His eyes were geometric—rotating lines where pupils should be. His skin shimmered faintly, like paper soaked in moonlight.
Elias recognized him.
Coeus.
Titan of Intellect. Brother to Kronos.
They faced one another in silence.
It was Coeus who spoke first.
"This place defies all reason."
Elias tilted his head. "Then perhaps reason must grow larger."
"You exist beyond the dream of Titans. Yet you shape us."
"I reflect you," Elias replied. "I echo your choices before you know them."
"Then you are not a god."
"I am a question," Elias said. "One that can never be fully answered."
Coeus considered that. "You do not belong in this tale."
Elias smiled faintly. "Yet here I am."
The Hollow bent around them, adapting to Coeus's presence.
He walked its paths not like a guest, but like a scholar tracing the edge of a thought.
"You gave Kronos the sickle."
"No. Gaia did."
"But you dreamed it."
Elias nodded. "And dreams are the first seeds of action."
Coeus studied the tree.
"This world is unstable. Ideas move faster than time."
"That is what makes it sacred."
"Or dangerous."
Elias's eyes grew distant. "Both."
Meanwhile, Kronos slept.
And this time, his dream was not guided by Elias.
It came from within.
He stood in a field of stars, each one a child. Behind him, Gaia wept rivers. Ahead, Uranus blocked the path, arms wide.
And behind Uranus—a cage.
Not for the Titans.
For everything else.
For the future.
Kronos raised the sickle.
And then—
A whisper.
Not from Gaia.
Not from Elias.
From himself.
"To stop him is to become him."
He awoke in sweat.
In the Hollow, Coeus paused.
"He has seen too much."
Elias nodded slowly. "That is the price of knowing."
"And if he falters?"
"Then myth will reshape itself. Into tragedy, or something worse."
Coeus was silent for a long time. Then he turned to leave.
But before he stepped from the Hollow, he said one final thing:
"I do not fear gods. I fear ideas that survive beyond their creators."
Elias whispered back, "Then you understand what I am."
Outside, the stars shuddered.
Uranus was stirring again.
But now, Gaia's silence was no longer stillness.
It was coiling.
Preparing.
Beneath the soil, old names whispered.
And in the Hollow, Elias reached for the next story.
Because thought had come.
And now, fate would follow.